2.7 million displaced in 17 years: How climate change is redefining migration in Kenya
A man and his children, displaced by floods in Garissa County, take cover from the scorching sun in a makeshift shelter amidst the threat of the raging Tana River.
When the rain fails three years in a row, or a village is swallowed by rising floodwaters, the decision to stay becomes impossible.
From 2008 to 2024, more than 2.7 million people in Kenya were displaced by disasters, primarily droughts and floods. In 2023 alone, 641,000 were forced to flee, the highest annual figure since 2008. Experts warn these numbers could rise sharply by 2,100, underscoring how climate change is reshaping life for millions.
For northern Kenya’s pastoralists, seasonal movement has always been vital. Herders once relied on predictable rains to sustain livestock and livelihoods, but climate change has broken that contract. The 2020–2022 La Niña drought, Kenya’s worst in 70 years, decimated herds and livelihoods with no buffer. Then came El Niño-fuelled floods, triggering 335,000 displacements in 2020 and 336,000 in 2018. This punishing cycle of severe drought, then floods, then drought again is now the hallmark of Kenya’s climate reality. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre’s 2025 Kenya Disaster Displacement Risk Profile, of the 2.7 million displacements recorded over 17 years, floods caused 2.4 million and droughts 316,000, with storms, landslides and wildfires, accounting for the rest.
